We’re now six weeks out from another Xmas selling season - for some venues, this means a 20-50% increase in trading revenue; for others, it is the period in which they make or break the year.

Very few operators refresh their approach to the season - defaulting to the routine of prior years. While this works, it doesn’t work as well as refining your approach to account for the enormous changes taking place around us. As a result, most venues leave money on the table by not implementing strategies to increase average order value, repeat dining frequency and attract new customers. 

Here are six strategies to jumpstart your thinking and improve your Xmas selling season.

1. Boost rewards

Increase your rewards on offer to drive more robust engagement and encourage awards redemption - both drive significant order values. If you offer 10% back in your venue dollars, look to increase it - you are competing for attention in a peak dining window. Critically, make the offer visible with table tentpoles, posters, postcards and more (we can help produce these!). Even look to make your reward offers visible via a QR link on your receipts (ask your Abacus rep to show you how).

2. Bank Xmas spending now  

If you have created your own currency using Liven, fantastic. If not, we’re here to help you get set. Your dollars are different to rewards, they incentivise customers to buy now in exchange for earning more later. 

You lock in their future dining today, building a revenue moat around your business, and better still, we know that when they redeem your dollars, they spend more. Increase your rewards on offer now to ensure you win your fair share of customers' dining patterns over Xmas. Also, chat with your Liven team member about launching dollars that can only be redeemed at specific moments (say during quieter trading windows).

3. Heavily Promote Catering

Office parties, team lunches, and more skyrocket over the Xmas and New Year. Ensure you are promoting Catering heavily with office drops of catering promo postcards and posters in your venue and on your website. 

The best operators use QR codes to catch customers in the moment of interest and drive them to a mobile-optimised site built on Liven Nomnie. From there, they can catch email addresses, presell catering using venue dollars as an incentive, and simply surface their table and digital ordering to catch orders instantly.

4. Turbocharge Remote Ordering & Delivery  

While Xmas is a lot of fun, for many, it's a period where we are time-poor. Look to turn what is table ordering in your venue today into ordering from, and delivery to, anywhere. Fridge stickers, postcards, brochures and more can all drive QR-activated access to the menu to enable customers to skip the queue, order ahead or even request hyper-local delivery for bulk orders (this is where a venue offers an office, say, in the building next door, delivery by one of the team when an order reaches a specific value).

5. Switch on high-value features you’ve already paid for

Ensure you’ve got the features that matter most in this window set up and running. Tabs in Liven OrderUp is a great example - enabling customers to open a tab and order against it. Another is ensuring you have Liven Loyalty switched on - and think about increasing your Xmas rewards as a thank you to customers.

6. Launch gifting

On average, about 80-90% of traditional gift cards get redeemed. This means that 10-20% of gift card balances remain unspent, representing a source of revenue breakage for the issuer. Worse, most hospitality loyalty programs do not capture data well, limiting your ability to engage the cardholder and grow your community. Look to do gifting right this holiday season using your own currency - and incentivise them to gift your brand over others. The Little Lark Cafe might issue a $100 card with a $20 bonus, all in Little Lark Dollars. To register and claim their gift, the recipient will simply scan the QR code or visit the Little Lark web app (built using Liven Nomnie, of course) - and they are set.

Importantly, you still have time to get your technology foundations right. One of the advantages of working with a partner like Liven is we’ve already created and integrated all the critical technologies you need. Rewards and loyalty connect to POS, table ordering, payments, back-office and more. You flip a switch, and it all works at a fraction of the cost of deploying ass-on solutions from different vendors.

We’re six weeks out! Chat with your Liven specialist today, and we will get your holiday season trading strategy in place and ready to deliver results.

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